Sales professionals spend loads of time communicating with customers, so it’s no wonder that they don’t want to lose sight of anything valuable in the process. But how can they do it?

It’s no secret that almost any CRM system has built-in mechanisms that allow setting up a range of certain notifications. With many years of SugarCRM development experience, we can claim that its standard notification functionality is really powerful. However, in actual practice a company often has its own specific needs, that cannot always be met by out-of-the-box features. In this situation SugarCRM customization may come to the rescue. Today, we drill down all the ins and outs of the solution for sales people.

Why Customize SugarCRM Notifications?

First, it should be noted that SugarCRM has functionality that makes it possible to respond timely to a significant portion of emerging needs with the help of built-in mechanisms, such as Workflows, which is particularly flexible.

However, with the growth of the customer base, increasing complication of CRM system business logic and the company’s sales model, some of the businesses should go beyond the borders of the standard SugarCRM notifications functionality.

In fact, a good many sales people are familiar with the needs that are beyond out-of-the-box capabilities:

to receive notifications in case of different deviations from the normal sales process;

to receive the specific reports;

to receive notifications on the especial events that need special attention and focusing.

Have the same challenges or need to solve your specific tasks within SugarCRM?

The good news is that SugarCRM development helps meet all of them. To be substantive, below we provide 5 types of customized SugarCRM notifications from our own practice.

What Types of SugarCRM Notifications Can Be Customized?

Our experience proves that competent custom development makes SugarCRM more “intelligent”, supportive and well-disposed to the sales professionals. This is what happened at the well-known IT company Ciklum, where we have been working on custom development of the next SugarCRM notifications:

1. Email-reports

2. Email-notifications

3. Cumulative notification on the multiple records, that have been assigned to the user

4. The setting of the list of SugarCRM modules for notifications

5. The customization of block “Notifications” and Activity Stream

Let’s take a precise look on these SugarCRM customizations.

Email-reports

This type of SugarCRM notifications helps keep the sales users informed of the current state of Lead Stages throughout the whole Lead lifecycle.

Email-notifications

Email-notifications allow the sales users to track the time frames within which the Lead should be processed.

Cumulative notification on the multiple records that have been assigned to the manager

Such an approach helps to resolve the situation that quite often arises while working within the CRM system – the mass reassigning of the records inside the CRM system. The fact is that out-of-the-box SugarCRM system does not provide any special mechanism for records mass reassigning and therefore, in case of such situation the CRM system goes flooding the user with the notification on every single record in the CRM system that has been reassigned. That is the problem, indeed, because the user should have to constantly distract his attention on every email-notification rather than to focus on his work.

A very good thing about this SugarCRM customization is that the cumulative notification on the records that have been assigned to the manager is now presented as one email-letter, the incoming information, included into the email, is table-viewed, and is sent directly to the manager, which the records have been reassigned to.

The setting of the list of SugarCRM modules for notifications

This solution allows sales managers to choose modules on which they want to receive the appropriate SugarCRM notifications.

In fact, the additional tab is implemented on the manager’s profile in the CRM system. This tab displays the list of modules in the CRM system and check boxes next to each of the module. An important point is that from now on a manager has the possibility just to set the check box next to that module by which a user wants to receive notifications, that’ll help him in his work.

The customization of block “Notifications” and Activity Stream

This SugarCRM customization responds to the need of the Customer to have the possibility to discuss the certain record in the CRM system by Managers. In order to find the solution by staying within SugarCRM functionality it was decided to customize the block “Notifications”.

Using Activity stream allows users to view a list of activities performed on records, create posts, preview posts, comment on posts, etc. Users can easily track the most recent updates across their entire organization via the record and user posts on the activity stream. Moreover, from now if a user references a user (e.g. @John Smith) in his post, they will see the post in their Home page activity stream and what is more important – this post will get to Notifications box as a message.

What Are the Benefits of Customized SugarCRM Notifications?

As a result, the SugarCRM customizations, mentioned above, make the communication between the CRM system and a sales user more convenient and useful. Thus, a sales manager just focuses on his responsibilities and does his work and at the same time the CRM system communicates with him by sending appropriate notifications which help the user to do his work better and more efficiently.

Moreover, as practice has shown, such SugarCRM development reduces the risks of any breaking in smooth model run – the actions of the CRM system itself and the actions of the sales manager within the system have become more logical and complete.

To sum up, such SugarCRM customizations help:

to make the work of the sales reps more efficient;

to ensure the sales methodology support;

to increase the convenience and ease of the CRM system use.

The last thing we would like to point out is that the list of customized notifications at Ciklum does not exhaust all the possibilities of SugarCRM development. We are always glad to help businesses to find solutions to their unique problems. If you need our advice on SugarCRM customization, please leave your details here.